Well, I had to go back to school (Don’t worry, it’s not at Brandon College). I just took this picture because it reminded me of my Ex Roommate @thebrandontyler. I am actually going to school now at San Francisco State University. It has been a hard switchover to this new school. Basically, all of the system are more confusing than City College. Their web site doesn’t work as well and things are slow to respond to changes. Everything has pretty much smoothed out and I can turn in my homework now and things like that but thats not the end of the hardship. When I applied to get into SF State from CCSF I applied as an Industrial Arts major. So I was accepted into the Design and Industry Departments (DAI) at SF State. Because of that I received several emails before school started about what classes to take my first semester, GREAT! This will make things easy right? Just sign up for these required classes when I can register. So my registration date comes and guess what, each of those required classes has 1 section and they are all full, GREAT! So I decided to try and crash those classes to get added in. I got two of the four I was looking for and one unrelated but related Interior Design class that I actually really like; Overall not bad. The three classes has turned into a good transition from Community College while still working full time. It turns out that a real university is a lot more work than a community college. I already feel like i have more work than I ever did at CCSF with four classes in a semester. But there is something I really like about the work I am doing. A lot of it is kind of dry, but now that I am in a design program, everything has to look nice. I love it. We get these same letters and assignments and schedules, but they all have nice letterhead. When I do an assignment, half of the assignment is throwing together a full page letterhead. Also, because most of the stuff is submitted online, I can do full page bleeds so it all looks good without having to worry about spending $30 to get it printed. But overall, I really am liking school a lot more than I used to at City College or Saddleback or in High School. I can see the end now, and despite the fact that it is very far away, I can see it and feel it and I know how to get there and I know I will like it. Coming up on my next post will be the exciting tale of getting my car fixed... YAY!... Not.

Tags: school, design, work, apple, san francisco

Well the App Store is out and what a great system. Every single one of the Programs from the Applications Store is higher quality than any of the Jailbroken stuff that the iPhone had before. I have already bought $30 worth of stuff... which is many many months worth of iTunes Store purchase before. I don’t normally buy music on the iTunes store because of the DRM. All of the Programs that I have synced to my iPhone I can see being used. Even something stupid like iPint is just ridiculously fun. AIM does what it needs to do... it will be better once Apple has the background notification service going. Evernote will be incredibly useful for snapping receipts and business cards for later searching. Twinkle is a gorgeous Twitter App (albeit right now Twitterrific is more reliable). NetNewsWire is the venerable RSS newsreader that I could not live without. Urbanspoon is a terrific app that absolutely captures the idea of location based computing. It finds you and you shake the Phone and it does a lottery of different variables and finds a place for you to eat. Mandelbrot allows you to zoom into fractals in a way that only the iPhone allows. Pandora is an amazing streaming audio app. You just choose a band you like and it will play them and other music like them all for free all over EDGE. If there is a good excuse for Apple to allow background processes this is the only one I have found so far. And then the apps that I paid for are Enigmo and Critter Crunch. These two games are very fun. Enigmo is a full 3D game is actually quite challenging. Critter Crunch is absolutely enthralling. By the time I am done playing it I am gribbing the iPhone twice as hard as I should be and I just don’t want to let go.
Now of course there are some general gripes with third party developers. First, most apps don’t remember where you were too well. When you close them and go back you are often placed at the beginning of the App which is something Apple told everyone specifically not to do. Another complaint is people use the opening Image that the iphone allows as a splash screen. This is incorrect usage. The image is a placeholder to make the transition from the button being tapped on the home screen to your app actually open more smooth. And a complaint with games. Most games have the first problem where if you get a call or go home you lose your position in the game. Also, Critter Crunch pauses the music playing in iPod when it opens. I would really like to be able to play some games while listening to my own music.
These small issues aside, Apple has a great thing going here. The SDK has proven to make much better stuff, much quicker, than the old jailbroken method. If they just add a couple of things like coupon codes and such so that developers can offern incentives and several other things that are not coming to mind right now, it will be the easiest and cheapest way for Developers to sell Apps.

Tags: iphone, apple

I was copying some very large files and I was wondering what the best way to do it was. I started it on a 300Mbps N network from my Air to my iMac. Both are wireless and therefore each have an effective throughput of 150Mbps. It was going to take about 16 hours to transfer 50GB. Then I considered plugging my drives straight into the USB. However, that would have required ejecting them from the iMac and then finding a USB cable as they are both plugged in with Firewire 800. Then I caught it. I bought a USB Ethernet Adapter with my Core Duo iMac for my home server. All right I said to myself. I will make an exception this one time and make my MacBook Air not wireless. It was truly a hard decision... but it is done and transferring now.

Tags: macbook air, san francisco, networking, computer, apple, mac, imac

I will need to make another post about my new iMac and my new house that I live in. But here is the apple on the front. The apple is just solid gloss black. It makes a rather nice reflection. You can see my sexy aluminum keyboard in the apple. Sweet.

Tags: mac, apple, photography, computer, technology, reflection, mirror

I think it's funny walking around in Powell Station. This is the subway station near my new workplace downtown at the Union Square Sunglass Hut. However, it's also the stop closest to the Apple Store on Market Street. Every single ad space in Powell Station is an iPod ad. Every pillar, every poster, every banner. They are all iPods. This is kind of ironic because of the iPod situation of San Francisco. Basically everyone is San Francisco has heard of an iPod. There are three types of people here. The ones that own iPods (most). The ones that don't own an iPod because they have no use for it (like they drive to work or something like that). Or the ones that don't have one because they refuse to buy an iPod and instead have a competing product. So there is really no reason for Apple to spend so much on advertising up here.

Tags: san francisco, union square, powell, muni, ipod, apple, sign